[warning: contains hyperbole, a vague sense of history, broad sweeping strokes that may possibly be inaccurate and some swearing but y'know, the point remains. This was originally a forum post, it turned big so I thought I'd bung it up here.]
Take a trip back to the eighties if you will via my magic time bubble. A time before we the PC and Playstation and all the silliness and stupidity of the nineties we’re still trying to distance ourselves from for the sake of the industry as a whole.
In 1984, the average price of a game would have been somewhere around the 5 to 6 quid mark. Mastertronic launched in 1983 selling (quite shoddy initially) budget games at a penny shy of 2 squids. 7 years later and Mastertronic were still selling budget games. How much for? A penny shy of 2 squids. The average price of a game outside of the budget range? £14.99. The quality of budget games at this point? Generally, in many cases, outshining the full price ones.
Now, what the budget games had an advantage with is that they weren’t -just- restricted to Boots, Smiths, Knight Computer Adventure World, Trumpton’s World Of Nerd or whatever. They were available in garages, corner shops, video shops. Everyone with a bit of pocket money could just nip down to the local store and grab one.
No doubt it put a few noses out of joint. No doubt that there was calling of “we’re all going to be making budget games”, “the consumer will only want £1.99 games” and the likes. It didn’t happen. It was an entirely invented worst case scenario fiction. It was such a massive fiction that even the budget labels were able to “go premium” and spread price points around.
So you had this massive spread of prices. £1.99, £2.50, £2.99 – midrange stuff around 6/7 squids, compilations with a fuckton of games on for a tenner – MILK THAT BACK CATALOGUE, BABY. And your bog standard new releases at just under 15 fluffy pounds.
Then the nineties came and we fucked the market up proper so we can have some lovely short term growth and drive around in Mercedes like the fall of Imagine never happened and pay rent boys to snort coke and shit in our mouths. Fuck you, Mr Consumer, fuck you in the eye. £30, £40, £50, £75. We’re a grown up business with grown up prices and the only budget stuff you’re going to see, Sonny, is games from 3 or 4 years ago that we can’t be arsed with any more but we know we can milk a fiver out of you for it.
VWORP! VWORP! (That’s my best TARDIS impression!) – it’s the 2000′s. We’ve got digital distribution, we’ve got proper internets. We’ve got the ability to sit there, look back at the nineties and shake our heads in dismay as we realise that we can’t carry on down that road. So, what can we do? We can sort of get the market levelling a bit again. How so sir? With Tetris? Not possible, didn’t bring the gameboy. Instead – let’s start getting a spread of prices back.
The more variety of price points, the more we can say “hey, you with £2 – you can have a good game too! Don’t be sad!” and we can still say “hey, you with £75 and a brain like a muppet! You can buy our glorious mega budget premium title!”. Thing is, it’s not quite that simple either – because you can also say “hey you, not being served by anyone else? I’ll give you my wares but hey, you’re going to have to pay proper monies for it because no-one else is making this stuff and I’ve got to eat”. Or in short, if you don’t pay me, you won’t get because no-one else is doing it.
That’s awfully idealist I know, but it works. Cliffski isn’t exactly using sandpaper for his arse. Jeff Vogel isn’t exactly living in a slum and Derek Smart wasn’t last spotted offering someone a blow job for a fiver, haggard and toothless from years of pimp abuse but ideally suited for the “old lady fanciers”. And there’s absolutely no pressure at all on them to drop prices.
Yet they’re indies! What’s going on here? Easy.
The only people who have the pressure placed upon them are those who make Snappy The Crocodile, sorry, games as commodities. In which case, they’re entirely at the mercy of those who deal in commodities. IE – Big Fish, Reflexive and their ilk.
Now, you can make good money in commodities but that’s a business choice and you have to acknowledge the risks that go hand in hand with that and frankly, you’ve got no right to complain when you made the choice. Not you personally, obviously, it’s a nebulous you unless you’re one of them. In which case, kindly die.
To sort of wrap this up before it turns into a novel, it’s your choice as a developer selling games how you target the market. If you make a commodity game at a premium price when everyone else is selling commodities then it shouldn’t be a surprise to discover that you’re shopping in B&Q for cheap sandpaper to wipe your backside with.
You still have the following choices available to you, mind – none of which come with any guarantees. Heck, that’s life though folks!
Make a shit game and wonder why no-one buys it. Not recommended, but fuck me, it’s not stopped anyone before now has it?
Make a good budget game at a good budget price. You deserve to do well.
Make a good premium game at a good budget price. In which case people will look on and say “man, whoop!” and hopefully you’ll get what you deserve in renumeration.
Make a premium game in a niche no-one else is serving. See above for examples.
Make a good game and bung it out at whatever the price and if enough people like it enough, they’ll buy it and reward you accordingly.
All are perfectly viable choices and none are at the mercy of price pressure whether you’re an indie or a full blown proper commercial developer. Well, they are, but only the natural ebbs and flows of the economy and how much people have to spend, obv.
Where does XBLIG fit into all this? Easy. XBLIG is your Mastertronic. It’s your Codemasters but without having to endure Everiss. It’s your budget choice.
And just like back in the eighties where if you wanted premium publishing, you’d have to go to a premium publisher but you could just send a tape off to Mastertronic and find your game in the 24 hour garage next to the crisps a month later, we’re getting a status quo back. And that’s good for everyone in the long term.
What XBLIG isn’t is saying “these games are shit”, it’s not saying “this is all indie devs deserve” and it’s not saying “hahaha, we’re going to drive prices down into the ground”. Why? How fucking stupid do people think Microsoft are?
“Hey Steve, shall we just kill our revenue stream?”
“Yeah, man!”
It’s not likely that anyone, even the corporate behemoth that is Microsoft has any interest in that so tinfoil hats off, people.
